But as Palestinians have long known, the parties that make up the Zionist Union, particularly Herzog’s own Labor Party – whose previous leader Yitzhak Rabin signed the 1993 Oslo accords with the PLO – have only ever offered Palestinians an iron fist in a velvet glove.

Israeli activist Ronnie Barkan subtitled the video at the top of this article of Herzog’s comments.

Herzog explained to activists how the Zionist Union needed to act to stem the loss of votes to parties even further to the right.

“How do we win the hearts of the people?” he asked.

The challenge, Herzog said, would be to convince the public that the Zionist Union was fit to govern “without giving a sense – which I encounter in numerous meetings with the Israeli public – that we are always Arab lovers.”

Notably, this crass pandering comes at a time of escalating racism in Israeli streets, including frequent “Death to the Arabs” marches.

No gap

Herzog also revealed that he had made intense efforts to join Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s ruling coalition, because “these days the gap between myself and Moshe Yaalon is relatively small.”

More recently, Yaalon, the ostensible moderate, expressed his preference for Islamic State, the violent extremist group also known as ISIS, over Iran, the Persian Gulf power which last year signed a nuclear agreement with Israel’s largest patron, the US.

If it wasn’t abundantly clear that there is no practical difference between Israel’s Zionist “right” and “left,” Herzog boasted at the Ashkelon meeting of his plan for hafrada – the Hebrew word for separation that can reasonably be translated as apartheid.

This was the plan Herzog campaigned on during last year’s Israeli election, and it reveals that the vision of Israel’s so-called peace camp amounts to nothing more than permanent occupation of the West Bank and a bantustan for Palestinians.

In addition to Herzog’s comments in Ashkelon, Barkan added three more clips to the video that underscore that the Zionist Union is not and has never been an alternative to Israel’s status quo.

The final clip shows Herzog, then minister for social affairs, on the UK’s Channel 4, trying to explain and excuse Israel’s attack on a UN facility during Israel’s 2008-2009 assault on Gaza.

Though it did not come to pass, bringing Herzog on as foreign minister would have made sense for Netanyahu since, as the record shows, the two have few real policy differences.

But as former Israeli prison guard and Atlantic writer Jeffrey Goldberg put it, Herzog, with his dovish image, could “gain access to the West Wing” of the White House, where Netanyahu has “burned bridges.”

Herzog must go

The liberal Tel Aviv newspaper Haaretz was so appalled by Herzog’s “Arab lovers” comments that it editorialized that the party must get rid of him as soon as possible.

“Veering rightward won’t help the Labor Party either in the polls or on election day,” it said, adding that “the public will always prefer to buy racist goods from the source, rather than from a wretched, pale imitation.”

Haaretz hoped that Herzog would be replaced “with a leader who will offer a moral alternative to the right-wing government and hope for a just, egalitarian Israel.”

In the unlikely event that this happens, it would be historic and completely unprecedented.

Comments

As Vladimir Jabotinsky cogently wrote in 1923 representing
what was and is and always will be the consensus of Zionist belief
and action, there cannot ever be a "voluntary" agreement of
any kind. This is brilliantly explained in Jabotinsky's
THE IRON WALL... which should be must reading for all
advocates. By "voluntary agreement" agreement Jabotinsky
meant in fact what has come to be called "peace".

Jabotinsky which has often been seen as only the voice of a
FACTION----"revisionist"--- Zionism is in fact fact a presentation
of the whole Zionist consensus. Jabotinsky describes colonization
by Zionists and the transformation of an "arab" Palestine to
a Jewish state where Jews via a majority have guaranteed
control.

(The form of nation upon which the Jewish nation must be based
according to consusensus is derived from the pan-Germanic concept where every minority must have total control of its nation. It therefore
builds on the bases of anti-semitism which only the true members
of a pre-defined group (such as Aryans etc.) can control an area.)

It is misleading to consider this view as only that of only rightwing
parties in Israel as Jabotinsky presents it.

Thus it is no surprise that all followers of Zionism follow
this consensus view whetever the "rhetoric" (such as
"peace" accords etc).